Sepia and Stone
by hyacinthian
Summary: Memories in sepia are never as good as those entombed within stone. [MacCassidy]


A/N: Up to and including Not Pictured, except for referencing a funeral. This is angst. This is also kinda Mac/Cassidy-ish though not a lot. The poem is italicized and that's based off of a poem in "Ten Things I Hate About You," except modified. Other than that, leave some shiny feedback. (First VM fic, as well.)

* * *

She smiles at him, and he smiles back in a nervous kind of way that tugs at her heart. He wants her to do something for his business, he says. He always sounds so nervous, she thinks. Like he's afraid. She doesn't say anything to him, but he sees it. In her eyes. You don't know the half of it, he thinks. She smiles at him and agrees to take the job. She's doing his homework for him, she says. Another smile. He smiles back. Her smile never reaches his eyes. She's all smiles, he thinks. And he's all frowns.

_I hate the way you talk to me._

He meets her later, and her laptop is situated in the diagonal space between them, or something like that. An intermediary. She shows him the options she's come up with, and he responds, all vigor and teenage boy excitement. She smiles again. And he smiles back. She looks into his eyes, and she remembers second grade. Moxie. M-O-X-I-E. Moxie. He looks in her eyes and forgets his childhood. And he's grateful. His smile never meets her eyes. He'll destroy her, he thinks. No, he knows. He tends to destroy everything good in his life.

_And how you seem to care._

She remembers the first time he talked to her. She remembers the first smile he gave her. Like a performance, she could tell right away. It was that bad. It wasn't that the smile seemed malicious or anything. It was just…not genuine. She cracks a joke. The second time he smiles, she catches it. That slight glimmer of actual happiness in his eyes. But it flickers and dies. Flickers and dies.

_I hate the way you smile._

Veronica finds them at the carnival. She chats with Veronica for a little bit, and hopes that he doesn't mind. But why should he? He's been around girls before. He knows they talk. But she watches him when Veronica leaves. His eyes fall to her, and settle there for a brief moment. Solemnity falls around him like a shroud, but she tries to ignore it. When Dick finds them, it's that same gaze, the same laser-beam stare, but it's directed at Dick this time, and she can kind of sense the malice on his part and the stupidity on Dick's part. There's something about his eyes that scare her, and just as she goes to squeeze his hand, he drops hers.

_I hate it when you stare._

Before they meet Dick at the carnival, when his hand is still with hers, when his hand still fits hers, she talks to him about hand holding. Asks him if they're winning. He didn't answer the question then. And he sure as hell answered the question now. He smiles at her. He didn't want to lose her in the crowd, he said. And then Dick came and made fun of him and his manly pride was hurt, or something like that. He drops her hand.

_I hate the way you hold my hand._

They stand in the middle of the hallway, his hand in hers. Just standing. He stares at the wall. She stares at the wall. He sighs. She laughs. She sighs. He laughs. It's a delicate process. He waits and she can sense it. The question lingers in the air. She asks him to the dance. It's just like Leave it to Beaver, she thinks. Except not.

_And the way you read my mind._

_I hate you so much it makes me sick;_

_It even makes me rhyme._

It's when they go out on Pizza Quest that they finally have a talk. About them. Whatever the pronoun means, anyway. But they've both always been math people, and it was easy enough to turn from the word and ignore it. Or try to. But she's not the kind of person that will let things rest. So they sit. Eat pizza. Talk.

"You know, this can't last forever," he says.

"I know," she says.

"Do you?" She nods. "Are you sure?" She nods again. He takes a bite of his pizza, chews for a moment, and swallows the bite, wiping his mouth afterwards. "Remember what I said?" She looks puzzled, confused.

"What you said when?" She smiles half-heartedly. "About Dick?" He shakes his head.

"No. All the crepe paper in the world couldn't make the gym a jungle paradise."

She smiles softly, genuine affection emerging. "You mean when I was having my moment?" He smiles too at the memory, but it's an abrasive smile. He grabs her wrist. Firmly, but not forcefully.

"Listen to me. All the wishing in the world can't make me perfect either." He looks into her eyes, in that gushy way that romance novels constantly invoke, and holds her wrist with a little more force.

"I know that," she says, softly. "I'm not trying to make you perfect."

A soft pause falls between them. Soft. Everything with her is soft, and he doesn't want to ruin it. He doesn't want to harden any soft parts that she has until she's become what he is—all hard angles and fragments. Hard, but brittle. He smiles a little. She smiles back.

It wouldn't be forever, he said. He certainly kept his word.

_I hate the way you're always right._

Their first awkward moment. A quasi-argument. A something that wasn't a something, but a bunch of little things mushed together. She's not sure when she stopped making sense. They had been walking. After the dance. And she had looked at him, and tried vainly to tell him about her insecurities. She looks at him, her pupils shining. Wink wink nudge nudge, they said. But he had turned away.

"Dick," he said. "Dick'll be there." And for every excuse he made, she parried until he just came out with what he'd been holding in. What he'd wanted to say. Without saying anything. So cliché, and yet, he was a master at that. He had looked into her eyes, and she had seen it. The little piece of him that was there, that wasn't veiled. One second, and she had wrapped her arms around him. Another second and he was gone.

Gone. Gone. G-O-N-E. Gone.

Somehow, saying it more didn't make her feel better then. And it still doesn't work now.

_I hate it when you lie._

He's a bad teacher. She can spot bad teaching from a mile away, and she's certainly had her fair share of bad teaching. She overhears his lesson, and she just wants to burst out laughing. But, of course, she doesn't. Because that would be mean. Even though the boy she liked—likes—was mean to her—incredibly mean—doesn't mean that she should be mean back. The five-year-old part of her triumphs in stealing her voice. She stands, stifling a giggle when she hears the term spark plugs. She sits down, and starts doing her thing. She makes him laugh sometimes. And he makes her laugh sometimes. But most of the time, they just make each other hurt.

_I hate it when you make me laugh._

She sits in the corner, the shower curtain wrapped around her, her knees up to her chest. They find her like that, eyes all wet and red, still sobbing. Why, she had asked. How? She didn't know why, but she definitely knew the how. She had seen it that day. The day when they had broken up. The unbelievable cruelty that he had possessed in him. She wouldn't have believed it had it not been directed her. Good luck getting laid, he had said. And though she never told him, that had struck a wound. She had cried about that one too, but in the privacy of her own home. And this…the follow-up to the first cruel act…was even worse. She wasn't even at home. Stuck at the Neptune Grand in a shower curtain. Certainly not a story for the grandchildren. If she'd even have grandchildren.

_Even worse when you make me cry_.

He still makes her cry. This time it wasn't anything he did to her. It was what he did to himself. She tries not to let it get to her. She's in college now. This is supposed to be the time of her life. She pretends—tries—to be happy, or at least act happy. She hates that he's ruined her life. That's a pretty prestigious thing for a teenage boy.

_I hate it that you're not around._

She talked to Dick after it happened. She didn't even know what was going on. Not really. He told her. Everything. How he died. What he said before he died. What he did. Dick was not one to sugarcoat things, that's for sure. And she had sat there. And listened. And thought about the boy she loved. Thought about the boy she thought she knew. And thought about the boy that wasn't there anymore.

_And the way you had to fall._

My name is Cassidy, he had shouted. Or so she had heard. Pizza Quest, she thinks. We still have a couple more stops. Everything clicks in her head at once, and she doesn't want to think about the fact that he's not there to click with her. Spark plugs, she thinks. Liquid courage, she thinks. It's all too much. Too much. She runs to the bathroom and splashes cold water on her face. Neptune Grand. Splash, she thinks. S-P-L-A-S-H. Splash.

_But mostly, I hate the way I don't hate you._

At the funeral, she sets a bunch of flowers on his casket. She can hear camera shutters go off in the background. This isn't right, she thinks. That's the girlfriend, they whisper. The girlfriend. Get a picture of her being emotionally distraught. So she won't cry. Not for them. She'll cry for him when she's alone.

_Not even close._

_Not even a little bit._

_Not even at all._


End file.
